TOTAL VENTE

Présentation

OVERVIEW

This sale comprises a selection of items from the celebrated manuscript collection of Martin Schøyen, in London and Oslo. The sixty lots have been chosen to represent the entire history of writing in Europe, from piece of an ancient manuscript of Homer’s Iliad right through to the thirteenth century, with specimens of some of the rarest and most compelling scripts from the Dark Ages and early medieval Europe. Here are examples of the famous and strange manuscripts from the Merovingian abbeys of Luxueil and Corbie and Anglo-Saxon England, and in Greek, Hebrew, Samaritan, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and Latin. The sale includes several of the oldest of all manuscripts of parts of the Bible, among which is the earliest witness to part of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, in Greek. It also includes no fewer than three lots with text in the extremely rare Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) language, a concurrence which has probably not occurred in any one sale since the sixteenth century. The sale catalogue will doubtless be reference work for many years to come.